So in this last of our pre-Easter series – what has Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished for us? An enormous amount – here are five or more of absorbing it, to turn into worship, maybe one a day…
First – if we reach out and receive God’s salvation for ourselves – then, what Jesus did in paying the penalty for our sins on the cross means we now are justified! – that is, declared 100% righteous before God (Rom 3:24), no matter how messed up we are! And with that, we’re brought into a good, right relationship with him (Rom 5:1). So then we are forgiven forever; we need have no fear of God’s judgment (that, incidentally, is something none of our orthodox Muslim friends can ever say); we are utterly safe! As we explored two posts back, this is the foundation for all the glory that follows. Because we have obeyed his remarkable summons to receive Christ into our innermost being as our Lord and Saviour, and are thereby genuinely united with him, then, as Paul explains in Romans 6, that includes our being `united with him in his death`: his death is our death, the eternal-death-payment he made for sin is ours too; astonishingly, therefore, we are now holy in God’s sight! Thank you Lord!
And then, because that sin-barrier between God and us has been taken away permanently and we are forgiven, there are huge relational consequences. It is not as if we are justified and forgiven but kept as sinners at a distance (I could imagine God saying to me, `You can come into heaven, but please sit right at the back`); rather we are fully reconciled with God (2 Cor 5:18-19, Col 1:20-21), we are welcomed back into the very heart of the Father! Thankyou Lord! The world-famous story of how the lost, prodigal, wasteful son gets welcomed back so undeservedly and joyfully in Luke 15, and the party begins, is our story! And indeed our welcome is demonstrated not just in parable but in history: fascinatingly, Matthew 27 tells us how when Christ’s cross-work of salvation was completed, the old testament-style temple veil that shut worshippers out from God’s most holy presence, that veil that even the priests could hardly ever pass through, was ripped apart, from top to bottom. And so, as Hebrews 10 tells us, once and for all we have `confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain` – that is, the veil; and so `Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart, and with the full assurance that faith brings!`
And there is so much more. Two posts back we talked about the wonderful consequences of our being `in Christ`, `united` with Christ. (`The glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ **in you**, the hope of glory!` (Col 1:27).) Romans 8:17 puts this result of the cross in another very striking way: we’re adopted as God’s children (think about what that means; again no sense of distance at all!), and his heirs (equally remarkably; think about what that means too, given that God’s existence is certainly not coming to an end!) And going back to that `united` theme: with the sin-barrier gone because of the cross, Jesus our `firstborn brother` (Rom 8:29!) comes to live in us every minute by his Spirit (this is so much more glorious than just `being religious`!!) Thank you Lord! Now that God has given us the Holy Spirit, he has started his loving work of transforming us beyond imagination, to fit us for the heaven he created us for, making us like Jesus himself (Rom 8:29 again). Indeed, `since we have been justified by faith` and so `have peace with God`, says Paul, we `rejoice in the hope of the glory of God!` (Rom 5:1-3): in confident hope of the future we shall have eternally, because of the cross, where God has prepared for us undiluted joy such as we’ve never known on earth, forever in the company of our `brother` Jesus in the glorious, joyous presence of the Father!
And there’s much more still, starting right now. The cross means we are set free in many, many ways. Because the barrier is gone and Jesus God the Son is forever with us, we can know what it is to be set free from fear, from lostness, from loneliness, from helplessness, from hopelessness. All of those! We can know too what it is to be set free both from death and the (justifiable!) fear of death, both temporal and eternal; because Jesus has gone through all these so that we will never need to. Christ shared in our humanity, says Hebrews 2, `so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.` Death is no longer the tragic, ominous thing it was as sin’s unpaid penalty (Rom 6:23); for us it’s now both the preordained completion of God’s work of art that is our life, and also our gateway into unimaginable joy and glory, each of us being with the omnipresent Jesus, seeing him personally face to face (Phil 1:23)! And yes, we are delivered as that same verse says from the power of satan to the power of God (Acts 26:18; cf Col 2:15). I wonder if I have any understanding of what that means, and how serious it is; clearly it is very significant; thank you Lord! Then also our deliverance from sickness flows from the cross. Both Scripture (1 Tim 5:23, 2 Tim 4:20) and experience show that this may not be complete in this life. But (speaking as someone coping with multiple longterm health issues) I rejoice gratefully to think of the numerous remarkable healings we’ve seen in my church and my family in answer to prayer. Matthew 8:17’s use of the classic cross-passage of Isaiah 53 makes clear that somehow this too is the result of the cross; and we all look forward to waking up after death (unless Jesus comes first!), stretching out like in the first moments after a long illness or injury – that strange feeling of flexing our limbs, gingerly, then more easily, remembering with surprise what it used to feel like to be healthy, without weakness or pain, only much more so now – stretching out in surprise and knowing, for the first time, what it means, physically, emotionally, mentally, to be fully, gloriously whole!
(Drafting that paragraph has really done me good!)
And the cross also means deliverance now from ongoing sin, something we could never achieve just by our own religious efforts (Rom 6:6-8). Of course this too is a process, not without its struggles and disappointments (as Paul says very honestly in Romans 7). But because of the cross, whatever there is in our personalities that still inclines us to sin, yet in our deepest, innermost being God’s Spirit is now in control (Rom 8, eg v9-10). We’re firmly promised, therefore, that ultimately `sin will not be our master!` (Rom 6:14); and what’s guaranteed, `predestined`, is that one day we’re going to be – each in our own unique way – made just like Jesus! (That’s the wonderful end point promised in Romans 8:29; see also 1 John 3:2.) Lord, I am so grateful for the cross that made all this possible!
So how should we respond to all this? Surely first of all in worship. (One of these themes daily this Easter perhaps?) And then by fostering the desire to know the cross better and better. There is so much to grasp! Then we will follow Jesus in carrying this `first-importance` part of God’s truth into a world that’s dying for lack of it; bringing his salvation into the world as we preach, above all, `Christ crucified` (1 Cor 1:23). Then because of what we learn in the cross, we will ask God to help us live our lives basing our relationships on the way of the cross (`This is love… that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another`, 1 John 4:10-11); which includes carefully forgiving as God through the cross has forgiven us (Col 3:13). And in this and other ways, as Jacques Ellul has said, we will follow Jesus in absorbing the evil from the world as he did; knowing too that the fundamental `Calvary principle`, that cross leads to resurrection (John 12:23-26, 2 Cor 4:10-11), must apply to us also: any suffering we incur as we follow Jesus must assuredly lead to glory (Rom 8:17-18)…
And lastly, as Paul said in 1 Cor 11:28, let’s examine ourselves carefully each time before we take the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, as to whether God’s Lordship is indeed marking our lives; renewing our repentance in faith in the Christ of the cross, resurrection and pentecost, who longs to help us grow that way, now and forever. (Jesus I’m sorry for everything I’ve done, this week too, that contributed to put You on the cross; I turn afresh right now from every sin I’m aware of and all my expressions of independence; in faith I trust You to have paid for every sin I’ve committed. And now I commit myself afresh to live Your way now, with You as my Lord, and as my Empowerer: to forgive as You have forgiven me; to follow You in absorbing the evil from this world; to follow You in bringing your cross-salvation more widely into this world; to trust You to live in me as my life’s centre, throughout my whole future and eternity… Thank You Lord Jesus, for dying, for me…!)
Because of the cross we worship! The cross is the centre of human history — the centre of the universe — the ultimate revelation and glory of God. We shall never exhaust it, nor outgrow it; throughout eternity we will be feeding on it, and will be worshipping God for it… Thank You Lord! Hallelujah!!
PS: A footnote about the implications of our being welcomed back, right now, `through the veil` (Heb 10:20), into the very heart of God, because of the cross. When I had the huge privilege of joining for eleven wonderful years in what God was doing in Russia, it did bother me that the Orthodox tradition often recreated that veil that was ripped from top to bottom when what Jesus did on the cross was completed. Churches often have a visible barrier or `iconostasis’ dividing off, as in the old testament temple before the cross, a holiest place into which at a point in communion only the priests can pass, a place hidden from the eyes of the ordinary believers; implying alas that the ordinary believer may not belong in the deepest heart of God. The result, or parallel, in my experience, can be a spirituality marked not so much by joyous certainty of acceptance now into God’s very presence, as by an ongoing grieving for sins maybe still not fully dealt with, of a God still needing somehow to be pacified, and a sense of guilt and exclusion still; a spirituality perhaps of sadness more than of the joy God wants for us right now, and his love extending now gloriously into every part of our lives. Of course this also has to do with an understanding of salvation (receiving grace) centred not on final, once-for-all new birth by faith, but as something incomplete till death that can result only from a continued process of participation in the sacraments. And this is a very serious issue in other, western confessions too. This wonderfully matters, and it’s about the cross: because of when Christ completed his work on Calvary and he cried out triumphantly, `It is finished!`; the door for us each into God’s presence is not somewhere away in the future provided we do what we should; rather it is safely behind us when we accepted God’s redemption and new life for ourselves, and so were, as Jesus says, `born again`, or became, as Paul puts it in 2 Cor 5:17, `in Christ… a new creation`!
Let’s never lose sight of the fact that, because of the cross, from new birth onwards we are complete in Christ, as the NASB translates Paul’s joyous declaration in Col 2:10. Because of the cross we are now, already, justified forever; we are forgiven forever; we are united with Christ forever; we are set free in so many ways forever; and we are welcomed forever, as his beloved children, into the very deepest heart of the Father! Because of the cross; thank you Lord!!! Thank you Lord!!
